


You're smarter than all of them.

by loboto



Category: Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 12:46:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loboto/pseuds/loboto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>The air is thick with choked death, but they've learnt to breathe as much as they can. Daryan Crescend, guitarist, detective, now dumpsite for ricocheted spatters of blood, brings his hand to rest on the cool window pane of the hotel's front door. His skin runs at the touch of familiarity. He tries to reign in his eyes, stop them from widening. Hundreds of bodies slump through the fogged street, aimless. Scooped of their insides, their hopes, dreams, loves, humanity with the infection's clawed hands. It hit five months ago. </em><br/>--------<br/>Inspired by the end of The Walking Dead Game; Klavier and Daryan are survivors making their way to a safe house. - A stupid zombie AU that wouldn't get out of my head unless I wrote it. I tried.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're smarter than all of them.

The air is thick with choked death, but they've learnt to breathe as much as they can. Daryan Crescend, guitarist, detective, now dumpsite for ricocheted spatters of blood, brings his hand to rest on the cool window pane of the hotel's front door. His skin runs at the touch of familiarity. He tries to reign in his eyes, stop them from widening. Hundreds of bodies slump through the fogged street, aimless. Scooped of their insides, their hopes, dreams, loves, humanity with the infection's clawed hands. It hit five months ago. Daryan turns to glance behind him, met with the stone figure of Klavier Gavin, his rockstar purple blazer torn at the seams, one arm of it gone, his skintight trousers lined with human remains. The G necklace hung low around his neck, though Daryan had called it stupid, a signalling light in a world that's out to get you (it reflected off everything left that shone, they loved it), but now it was regrettably invaluable. He'd cut a survivor's neck with it. Not Daryan, Klavier. He'd knelt down, the liquid of his smile, foreign to his lips, playing where the creak of his knees should have been, and torn through their skin. They both knew fans would find a way to make him perfect again later. Most importantly, Klavier was similarly drenched in blood, some Daryan had to smear on himself, so the both of them could walk past the undead as one of their own. They'd found out with a stupid mistake; he'd ran into battle, tears blocking, after another one of their friends had been left snapped at the bottom of some stranger's house and the walker, the 'zombie', the body- had been blind. Eyes gouged amateurly, veins like ripped electrical cords. He didn't attack him like the others. They'd seen cases like this before, with a certain prosecutor, and he'd smelt how human they were and lunged for a child's jugular. This walker merely stilled, swayed, and staggered past, leaving Daryan to stand in his freeze frame, wheezing. Klavier would have laughed if he could breathe.

Stay close to me. It was an idiotic mantra he'd cupped Klavier's face and whispered, pressed into his mind, don't be a hero. The truth, as they both knew, was that Daryan was the worst person for him to shade under. He'd been bitten, for want of happier, deprecating reasoning; he was too reckless, he was too violent, he took far too many chances for his life right now to be down to more than luck. But those were all skills valued in this, if it must be called, world. Heads kept down, breaths dragged, steering each other away from the paths of the walkers that constricted the road, scrolling to the dead street's end. A family gnawed at its screaming young outside the drug store to their left, interns and coffee makers from the office snapping the legs of the Chief of Police to their right. And there, right ahead, blurred by the stench of entrails, shadowed by the crumbling buildings, was a preen, prim walker, roaring and ripping its own baby blue suit to shreds in a moment of remembered hatred and Klavier stills and vomits onto the gravel. Not now, please not now. The safe house was close, he thinks, just that way, he doubts, balance and direction hazy for the last few metres, unspoken, but it feels like every drug in the world is pumping through his blood through someone else's hands and he grabs Klavier by his jacket and tells him to get up, now. They're flocking to the both of them, and Kristoph, _Kristoph_ claws down the sides of his face with manicured nails on rotting flesh, scraps of organ lining stuck under his cuticles and Daryan's yanking Klavier up with one hand and holding his brother back with the other and he swears the was-defence is laughing at him but the bottom of his jaw is just hanging there with thread for skin, swaying as he does, as the wind does, so he can't be and Daryan screams through Klavier's readmission to reality and Kristoph snaps his head to the side, locks his eyes onto his brother and his jaw moves independent, snapping the bone left on the right side of his mouth so it swings down and Klavier backs into another walker and Daryan can't reach his axe but it's ok, it's ok, he's going away, he whispers, he's leaving, fuck, he's leaving, why are you screaming? They're all going Klavier, we're going to win this, Klavier, we'll be alright. 

Daryan collapses in the middle of the street.

The shutter bangs firm onto the concrete ground, and he gulps a breath. Klavier's there, hand to his forehead, not knowing what to do, and it showing, but he's there, timing his heartbeat, holding fingers in front of his eyes, his lips moving with speech as blurred as his image. When you concentrate, focus in, on a bruise on your body, you feel everything in your being originate from where it's punched. It's the same with a bite, except it's your entire world. He can feel his blood struggle to fill him, his eyelids tied to the imprint of teeth on the inside of his left wrist, holding his eyes partly closed. Slowly, painfully, the lights brighten; the noise of screams and groans return, and Klavier comes back.  
"Daryan? Can you hear me?"  
His throat is dry and he can't speak at first. It terrifies him, he panics, stretches the time out slower, as if it's been hours he can't communicate with the blonde but it's five minutes and he's thrown forward, panting, his eyes bolted shut again, lips moving like mining copper, until he's repeating the same snide remark that came to his head first so many times, so strained and pathetic that it's not really funny anymore. 'Unfortunately. Unfortunately. Unfortunately. "  
Klavier sits him back straight, brushes his hair from his eyes, and presses something to his palm. Daryan, after a few minutes of slipping in and out of consciousness, holds the water bottle the bare tightest so it doesn't slip from his fingers on every attempted sip.  
"How are you feeling? Do you need anything?" Big blue meets his dusted grey. Finding a short fuse of energy, Daryan sits himself up properly, a funny bone colliding with the radiator next to him, but he can't feel it. Can't feel much of anything now.  
"No. No, I'm fine. I'm ok. I'm here." His line of vision dares to stray from Klavier's face. Their surroundings looks something like a long abandoned store, a large metal shutter holding them inside.  
"What happened?"  
"You passed out, that's what happened. I got you in here, shut-" Klavier points to the door. "-that." Looks him over. "You're lighter than you've ever been."  
"Yeah, well, I've been hitting the gym." His voice scratches messages against his sandpaper throat. "Can you open it again? We need to get out of here."  
Klavier drops his head. Daryan hisses as his hands click to fists.  
"We're fucking locked in here?"  
"I'm sorry, Daryan, I am. But you were on the road and there was so many, what else was I supposed to do? It was a big job getting you in here let alone keeping them all out. I'm not letting you get angry at me for saving your life, Crescend."  
"There's not much of it to save, you should have kept going."  
"And leave you there?"  
"Looked like your brother needed company."  
Klavier visibly washes white. "Maybe I should have." Pause. Klavier gets up, looks him down. "There's far too much of it to save."  
"Hm?"  
"Your life." That's all he says before walking to, what looks like, the cash desk. Some more bottles of water surround it, spilt and flooding pools of dried scarlet, distorting their cracks. Daryan rests his pounding head against the freezing radiator, eyes looking up, careful not to invite any drips of blood inside.  
"There's a-" Pause, breathe. "A-" His voice is coming out hoarse, almost invisible, as voices can. He's on the last page, being erased, pieces of himself noncommittally flecking the paper. "An exit." Klavier's ears perk like his dog's used to, and rushes over.  
"Be caref-uck!" Hot tears press down Daryan's eyes as he tries to warn him, tries to get up, and falls back down.  
Klavier backs away from the door window, breathing faux calm, spotting what Daryan already has.  
"The guard."  
"Ja."  
"Try the door anyway."  
"I don't- Ah-" He looks back to Daryan's slumped figure to be met with a tug of lip as if to say; "I would if I could." He curls his shaking hand against the door knob, and turns, and rattles.  
"Nein. Not budging. I bet you could do it."  
"Don't tease."  
"I wasn't t- Ah. Ja. What now?" Daryan presses his back up against the paint tattered wall, pushing himself up as much as his legs can take before buckling, slamming him back down onto the ground with a pathetic yell. He takes a moment, any moment, to breathe.  
"He's got.. keys, on 'im. They've gotta be.. door. Back of his office. Take my axe."  
"Ok." Klavier does so, after a long minute of silence, of stupid eye contact, of Daryan breathing into bagpipe lungs.  
"Smash the window."  
Instantly, he complies, pushing all responsibility onto this dying body hung onto a radiator. It's the best way to survive, he finds. Glass shatters loud into the office. The walker inside goes mad.  
"Reach in, unlock the door."  
Shaking, he complies, his skin dusting the glass. He can feel his blood breathe a sigh of relief. Click.  
"Do I attack it?"  
"Do you need to?"  
Pause. "Nein."  
Daryan wheezes out a; "No."  
"What now?"  
"He's got keys and.. gun, grab them, Klav." A shot of pain rings through his head. "You'll need th-A-Ah!" Klavier moves to rush to his side and since his excess luggage of a body already despises him he shouts; "Don't you dare come near me, Gavin, fucking do as I say!"  
Klavier coils back, and finally opens the door. The used-to-be roars at him.  
"He'll get me."  
"He won't. You're smarter than him, Klavier." Daryan winces, bucks forward from the wall as his spine goes. "You're smarter than all of them."  
Minutes later, Klavier is knelt before him, gun in one hand, keys revealing the tremors in the other. He looks at his former bandmate. His friend. He just looks. Daryan's skin is, if he had to say, absolute grey. Eyes sullied, dug deeper into his skull, the only flush in his cheeks from splattered blood of who knows from no-one cares, stealing someone else's pretend life. His breaths are sparse now, his heart slowing.  
"Look.. at you." He moves his torn lips irregularly, and Klavier feels deaf. "You're gonna do it."  
"We're going to do it, ja? Pronouns, liebe."  
Daryan laughs. Klavier doesn't recognise it.  
"I don't think I'm coming with you."  
"Nein, nein, you are, you are! Of course you are, I can't do this without you, I won't."  
"Through that door, if this is the place I think, you'll be.. one block from the train station. Nick's meeting you there, yeah?"  
"Herr Wright is meeting us both there."  
"He's meeting you there, Klavier." Without warning, the blonde jumps up, grabs Daryan's hand and pulls like a life depended on it. He might as well have been pulling dead meat. They reset.  
"I'm sorry."  
"Nein, nein! No! My- Daryan, please!" Klavier's chest caves, just for a minute, a breath, and tears start to fog the image of Daryan coughing up more blood. It looks better this way, less real.  
"You're gonna be so great!"  
"So are you."  
"I'm going to be one of them." Daryan's eyes slide to the office trapped walker, whining and snarling. Klavier's mouth jitters as it hangs open.  
"No! No! Please-" He looks back. "Please."  
A pause. The sound of blood lust clings to their skin.  
"You know what you have to do." He smiles, _smiles!_  
Klavier has never shouted 'No' so loudly in his life. Even the walker stills.  
"You want me to bite your head off? Might be a nice.. role-reversal." It's clear it's tiring for Daryan to speak now. Tears land on the gun. If this were a fairytale, maybe it'd be healed into some sort of medicine, antidote, but, as they've found out, this isn't a story, this isn't going to go away. His rational thought staggers forward, turns to look at his guitarist's head. Wouldn't want it caved, or crushed, or rolling on the floor. What if one swing from the axe didn't cut all the way through?  
Back in reality, Klavier is curled inward, screaming.  
"For me."  
He looks up, gun still in hand.  
"Target practice." There's those teeth again, bordered with red. Sobbing horridly, he raises the gun. It's shaking horrifically, and doesn't exactly look intimidating with a torn apart popstar on the other end, but Daryan's little breath still hitches, and he fights the instinct to tilt his head away, scramble his feet and cry. A pause. He's not going to do it. Daryan closes his eyes.  
"Remember six encores?"  
".. Ja. LA." He almost smirks. "We covered Britney."  
"I didn't know you knew it."  
"Bullshit." Klavier laughs, gun still pointed, aim becoming more and more steady as he speaks. "I sung it every night on that tour bus." Daryan opens his eyes, and winks slow.  
"You were like lightning."  
"Nein, you were."  
"No use-" He adjusts his body, decides his final seat. "-complimenting a dead man, you're not gonna.. get anything."  
"I love you." It's quick, and it's out, and Klavier swallows everything around him. It's not how he'd like, who'd dream of this every night, etch the scene into their ceiling through the dark, over breakfast admissions or declaration behind some sunset or drive-in movie. At least it's fast. He always thought that's what it'd be- if it ever had to be.  
"I love you too."  
"Next time, we should probably do something about that, ja?"  
Daryan laughs again. It's full and it's alive and somewhere in Klavier's mind hope screams something about a new way out, a new chance, but the inverse of the guitarist's brow, his strained throat, his fingers digging into the soft skin of his palm say a little different.  
"'Till then."  
Klavier pulls the trigger.


End file.
